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How then does the universal Intellect produce the particulars
while, in virtue of its Reason-Principle, remaining a unity? In
other words, how do the various grades of Being, as we call them,
arise from the four primaries? Here is this great, this infinite
Intellect, not given to idle utterance but to sheer intellection,
all-embracing, integral, no part, no individual: how, we ask, can
it possibly be the source of all this plurality?
Number at all events it possesses in the objects of its
contemplation: it is thus one and many, and the many are powers,
wonderful powers, not weak but, being pure, supremely great and,
so to speak, full to overflowing powers in very truth, knowing no
limit, so that they are infinite, infinity, Magnitude-Absolute.
As we survey this Magnitude with the beauty of Being within it
and the glory and light around it, all contained in Intellect, we
see, simultaneously, Quality already in bloom, and along with the
continuity of its Act we catch a glimpse of Magnitude at Rest.
Then, with one, two and three in Intellect, Magnitude appears as
of three dimensions, with Quantity entire. Quantity thus given
and Quality, both merging into one and, we may almost say,
becoming one, there is at once shape. Difference slips in to
divide both Quantity and Quality, and so we have variations in
shape and differences of Quality. Identity, coming in with
Difference, creates equality, Difference meanwhile introducing
into Quantity inequality, whether in number or in magnitude: thus
are produced circles and squares, and irregular figures, with
number like and unlike, odd and even.
The life of Intellect is intelligent, and its activity [Act] has
no failing-point: hence it excludes none of the constituents we
have discovered within it, each one of which we now see as an
intellectual function, and all of them possessed by virtue of its
distinctive power and in the mode appropriate to Intellect.
But though Intellect possesses them all by way of thought, this
is not discursive thought: nothing it lacks that is capable of
serving as Reason-Principle, while it may itself be regarded as
one great and perfect Reason-Principle, holding all the
Principles as one and proceeding from its own Primaries, or
rather having eternally proceeded, so that "proceeding" is never
true of it. It is a universal rule that whatever reasoning
discovers to exist in Nature is to be found in Intellect apart
from all ratiocination: we conclude that Being has so created
Intellect that its reasoning is after a mode similar to that of
the Principles which produce living beings; for the
Reason-Principles, prior to reasoning though they are, act
invariably in the manner which the most careful reasoning would
adopt in order to attain the best results.
What conditions, then, are we to think of as existing in that
realm which is prior to Nature and transcends the Principles of
Nature? In a sphere in which Substance is not distinct from
Intellect, and neither Being nor Intellect is of alien origin, it
is obvious that Being is best served by the domination of
Intellect, so that Being is what Intellect wills and is: thus
alone can it be authentic and primary Being; for if Being is to
be in any sense derived, its derivation must be from Intellect.
Being, thus, exhibits every shape and every quality; it is not
seen as a thing determined by some one particular quality; there
could not be one only, since the principle of Difference is
there; and since Identity is equally there, it must be
simultaneously one and many. And so Being is; such it always was:
unity-with-plurality appears in all its species, as witness all
the variations of magnitude, shape and quality. Clearly nothing
may legitimately be excluded [from Being], for the whole must be
complete in the higher sphere which, otherwise, would not be the
whole.
Life, too, burst upon Being, or rather was inseparably bound up
with it; and thus it was that all living things of necessity came
to be. Body too was there, since Matter and Quality were present.
Everything exists forever, unfailing, involved by very existence
in eternity. Individuals have their separate entities, but are at
one in the [total] unity. The complex, so to speak, of them all,
thus combined, is Intellect; and Intellect, holding all existence
within itself, is a complete living being, and the essential Idea
of Living Being. In so far as Intellect submits to contemplation
by its derivative, becoming an Intelligible, it gives that
derivative the right also to be called "living being."
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